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According to what I know now about Possessive Pronouns, we can to choose between one of the two following forms:

1) "This is your book" vs "This is yours"

2) "This is their book" vs "This is theirs"

3) "This is her book" vs "This is hers"

4) "This is our book" vs "This is ours"

5) "This is my book" vs "This is mine"

But I'm confused about two Possessive Pronouns: Its & his

Can I say (on the way that was mentioned above):

a) "This is his book" vs "This is his."

b) "This is its part" vs "This is its."

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2 Answers 2

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About "his": Definely, it is not comom, but possible. I see it in formal Speak as follows.

Obama speak:

"The one and only success, wich it is his to command is to bring to his work a might heart." Watch it.

A Bible (special version):

" (...) a griddle belongs to the priest who presents it; it is his." Read it.

About "its": Even being grammatically possible, I believe it is not useful. When you say that something is yours, hers or his, the person is generally important and evident. I cannot see a situation where would be useful to say "it is its". So people will always choose another way to express themselves.

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  • In my dialect "This is his" and "It's his" is extremely common. I broadly agree with the rest of your answer (with the quibble that I imagine "this is its" might well be useful if it were used, but for some reason it just isn't)
    – Jaime
    Feb 15 at 20:16
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Yes they are both correct.

His is parrallel to hers, but we cant add one more s after his.

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  • I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the last line; you can't add another "s" after "hers". (Or "its".)
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Oct 6, 2015 at 2:35
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    I mean you can distinguish between "her" and "hers" because the people who created these words added "s" after "her", such that we have two different words.However, you didnt know whether "his" or "its" can be put in the pattern above because "his" (possessive pronoun) and "his" (possessive determiner) are the same word.
    – Chu Wa Tim Tim
    Oct 6, 2015 at 2:43
  • "This is its" sounds very unnatural to me. I can honestly say I can't remember ever hearing it uttered. I'm not sure why, but it's the exception in the list of possessive pronouns, in every one of which the expression works fine!
    – Jaime
    Feb 15 at 20:11

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